MANAGEMENT AND PLANNING OF FREIGHT TRAFFIC

In its "Report relating to the stabilizing of the economic situation on the DB", the Board of Management of the latter undertaking again made a clear distinction between an administrative concept satisfied with maintaining the status quo, and the dynamic concept of a management prepared to carry out a policy acknowledging changes. Contrary to the management of a private economy undertaking, the leadership of a State railway undertaking does not exercise its functions within the management process independently. In the transport programme relating to freight traffic, it is necessary to plan the complete chain of production activities at the level of the undertaking organization. Here, the management must optimize the transport in relation to viability, capacity of output and profitability. Today, the DB already possesses, as modern means of planning, concrete information from the wagon flows concerning the entire rail network and from the electronic processing of information. To ensure that it is possible not only to control the existing offer by means of this data after the event, but also to be in possession of data for orienting the planning of future transport operations, it is necessary to employ modern methods of operational research to assist the management in its decisions relating to the optimization of the transport programme. The utility and application potential of planning models, still partly in the course of development, will differ depending on the level of management and the period covered by the planning exercise. The new concept of planning for freight trains means that cybernetics must be employed: both for optimizing the structure of the services and production methods, and in connection with the output from integrated transport management and automation.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Presented at Fourth International Symposium on Railroad Cybernetics, AAR/UIC/IRCA, 21-26 April 1974, Washington, D.C. This paper was also published in the November-December, 1973 issue of Rail International, which is available from E.S.L.
• Corporate Authors:

  International Union of Railways

  14 rue Jean Rey
  75015 Paris,   France 
• Authors:
  • Ruckel, R
• Publication Date: 1974-4

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 4 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Computers; Freight service; Information systems
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Freight Transportation; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00053762
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: International Union of Railways
• Report/Paper Numbers: Paper
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Apr 17 1974 12:00AM